The Backpack

Recently on a post in a widows group that I am in, someone asked the room to describe grief to the others. I saw people describing it as a tar pit that they have to walk through to get through their days. Others described it as a personal hell. A battlefield. “The worst experience of my whole entire life”.

Grief is not a journey but a process. To describe it as a journey implies a destination, an ending. I guess, in a way, there is an ending but that comes when your journey of life is over. Grief never ends. It changes. That is why it’s a process. The first year is survival. You’re in shock, numb. Your body and mind simply cannot process the magnitude of this trauma. You experience all the “firsts”. First Christmas, first birthday, Father’s/Mother’s day, etc. Once you’re through all these firsts, you notice a shift in the process, and in the processing. The numb wears off. The grief and pain is more acute. It’s kind of like hitting your little toe on the corner of the table. That initial pain with choice words in your mind, the hopping around cradling your foot, maybe a couple tears. Then, as time goes by, the intense hurt is gone, but there is a constant ache. You feel it if you step a certain way, or wear certain shoes. The healing has begun. Eventually you no longer feel it. Ok, so maybe that last part doesn’t fit with grief because you will always feel it, in one way or another.

For me, grief is a backpack that you wear on the journey of life. When you first put it on, you’re so not accustomed to the weight. It changes how you stand, maybe throws your balance off just a little. Maybe it digs into your shoulders a bit and makes your lower back ache. Over time, you get used to its bittersweet burden. While it changes how you go through your life, you can’t take it off. Nor would you want to. It’s heavy because of the memories stored in it. The unspent time, the unused words, the love with nowhere to go, they are all stored there. Some days you hardly notice it. Others it feels a little heavier. Some day it actually IS heavier. Something comes along and reminds you that it’s there, and adding that new thing makes the pack heavier. Your little girl experiences her first heartache and he can’t be her champion. The dog you had together passes away and you realize that it’s one more lost connection. You wear it always. You feel it, in one way or another, always. You make new memories and new experiences and new paths, but still you wear it. Always. It’s the love you never got to give. It’s beautiful and it’s ugly and it’s hard and it’s so heavy, but it’s yours.

You don’t carry it alone. I am here.